The Development of Foster City

By T. Jack Foster

Foster City, California, is a thriving, successful new town of over 30,000 people, built on the shores of San Francisco Bay. It is unique in several ways: it was planned and built from scratch over the mud flats of the Bay and every bit of it is on fill. This is the story of that development, by T. Jack Foster, Jr., who, with his father and brothers, acquired four square miles of land and caused it to be transformed into that new town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479710737

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Copyright © 2012 by T. Jack Foster, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

Chapter One The Times

Chapter Two The Start

Chapter Three Design

Chapter Four The Fill

Chapter Five The Bridges

Chapter Six Water and Sewer

Chapter Seven The Homes

Chapter Eight Leaseholds

Chapter Nine Non-discrimination

Chapter Ten Community Relations

Chapter Eleven 1966-1970

Chapter Twelve In Retrospect

Autobiography T. Jack Foster, Jr.

partners%20hayfield.jpg

Snapshot of partners standing in the hayfield of Brewer Island.

The levee can be seen in the background.

From left: Richard H. Foster, T. Jack Foster, T. Jack Foster, Jr.

and John R. (Bob) Foster.

CHAPTER ONE

The Times

T HERE ARE MANY things about the development of Foster City where it helps to understand the 1960’s. In the international situation, the cold war was at its hottest (coldest?). There was the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and problems brewing in Vietnam. In the United States, times were good and money was cheap. In California, growth was what everybody wanted and Governor Pat Brown proudly announced that California had passed New York State in population, then about 20 million in each state. Coldwell Banker’s logo showed the silhouette of a city skyline with black smoke belching from the smoke stacks, suggesting vitality and vigor. The civil rights movement was building as was the environmental movement.

The State Highway Department had adopted an aggressive and ambitious master plan to accommodate the traffic needs of a growing state. All planning bodies were expected to honor it. Highway 92 was planned to be the Sierras to the Sea Freeway running from the Sierras to Half Moon Bay. The master plan called for a Bayfront Freeway, built on combinations of fill and bridges, paralleling Bayshore Freeway and running just off shore of Foster City to the east. Both freeways impacted Foster City planning.

Locally, the attitude was pro growth. It was not even a debate issue. In 1959 the San Mateo County master plan projected Brewer Island, which became Foster City, as being all residential with a potential 60,000 people. The school districts were worried that such a population would bring down the assessed valuation behind each school child and thereby create a large financial problem. Brewer Island was two thirds in the San Mateo Elementary School District and San Mateo High School District and one third in the Belmont Elementary School District and Sequoia High School District. This could have been a serious problem for the planners in designing the schools into the land plan.

The general philosophy which prevailed at the time, in regard to development, was that vacant land which had been on the tax roll from the outset and had received little or none of the benefits of the taxing entities, was fully entitled to be used by the owner. Of course there were planning commissions and zoning laws, but, unlike today, no question of whether or not the land could be used. Furthermore, as it came into use, it was entitled to the same benefits and services that it would have received had it always been used. It was entitled to police and fire protection, to schools, to parks and recreation. And the owner of that land did not have to pay for those entitlements!! The attitude was that he or she had already paid for those services by virtue of having paid taxes since the creation of the taxing entity and would continue to pay along with everybody else.

In time, the philosophy changed so that the developer of such a parcel had to pay fees to cover those previously free entitlements, and to provide whatever lands are needed, and in some cases to build whatever public buildings are needed to service that community, including schools, parks, fire stations, etc. They would have to buy in to the community, not unlike an initiation fee to a country club. But that was not the rule when Foster City was being developed.

Finally, consider the change in the value of the dollar. From 1960 to 2012, the cost of living has increased about seven and a half times. When I write that we paid $13 million for the land, consider that that is the equivalent of $97 million today. Residential real estate has inflated more than that. The first houses that sold in Foster City were priced at $23,000. Based on the dollar, that would be $172,000 in 2012. Homes are worth many times that.

CHAPTER TWO

The Start

I T WAS 1958 when my father, T. Jack Foster, my brothers and I first saw Brewer Island, the place that would eventually become Foster City. Dad was living most of the time in Pebble Beach, though the home office of our family partnership, T. Jack Foster & Sons, was in Oklahoma City where it had always been. The company previous to that was Likins Foster & Associates. When Dad bought out the Bill Likins interest in 1955, he changed the name to reflect the new family partnership but kept the home office and the staff where it was. I was living in Hawaii where I was in charge of our activities, consisting of developing and selling some 1500 houses and processing for construction the 25 story Foster Tower Hotel in Waikiki. Brother Bob (John R. Foster) lived in Oklahoma City where he looked after the family oil interests. Dick (Richard H. Foster) was in El Paso, Texas, building a 450 unit apartment project, another family investment.

Dad called us all to meet in California. The purpose, he said, was to look over the Northern California real estate market to see if there was a development project that we might want to take on—one that we could all work together on. I am not sure he thought we would find one or if it was just a good excuse for all of us to get together. In any event, as happens in family businesses, the motivation was not entirely economically motivated, whether it was to be togetherness on the short term, as we looked, or long term if we found something and chose to buy in.

We looked at parcels and potential development opportunities from Sacramento to San Jose. In San Mateo we met a developer by the name of Richard Grant who showed us Brewer Island. We were very impressed with what we saw.

Grant’s office was on Norfolk Street in San Mateo and from his office we could see across the lagoon the levee which surrounded this remarkable land area. Beyond the levee were high power electric transmission lines of various sizes running generally north and south. We could see a barn in the distance and, beyond that, the towers of the lift section of the San Mateo-Hayward bridge. Being at a level lower than the levee, we could see little else.

There were seven of us: four Fosters, Grant, an associate of Grant’s, and Bill Innes, an executive in the Foster partnership. Taking two cars, we drove to Third Avenue in San Mateo and turned eastward onto the two lane approach road to San Mateo-Hayward bridge. We crossed a curving bridge over a drainage outlet to the bay and onto a roadway which was positioned on top of the levee. From that vantage, being appreciably higher than the land below, we saw for the first time the hay field and the vast land area that was Brewer Island. As our cars approached the toll station which was then on the west end of the bridge, we turned off through a gate down into the meadow where the dirt road divided